London, United Kingdom
DURATION
1 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
30 Jun 2025*
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
Request tuition fees
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* “As the RCA received a high number of applications we encourage you to apply as early as possible to secure your place on your programme”
* visit the RCA website to find out about fees for this programme as well as scholarship and funding opportunities
Online and on-campus events for future students
Introduction
The Jewellery & Metal program seeks to unpick the relationship between people and things, pushing beyond the subject-object binary JaM students explore the multiple ways we are entrapped and enthralled by the complex entanglement of the material and immaterial worlds. Through emergent acts of making, JaM believes we can shed new light on these complex and essential relationships, revealing great depths in our understanding of, and being in the world.
As artists and designers, we engage with the making process as an essential way of materialising ideas, thoughts, and feelings, offering a space for innovative and radical new ways of approaching jewellery, objects, and metal. We are responsive to the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape, drawing on history and technology in nurturing intellectual and creative skills directed at understanding and pushing forward jewellery and objects of human making. The rich and extensive bodies of knowledge associated with jewellery and metal object-making underpin an approach that is outward-looking and open to the wider discourse of “things” connected to contemporary life. Students can expect to work with, and through, a vast array of material possibilities, exploring a multiplicity of possible narratives.
How will I learn?
Through tutorials, critiques, workshops, and lectures students are encouraged to challenge traditional perceptions and perceived hierarchies, as well as to question and exploit both digital and analogue realities. Seminars and group discussions form an essential part of the programme as we believe that the cross-fertilisation of ideas alongside staff and peer feedback is essential to postgraduate learning and interdisciplinary thinking.
Meet the RCA
We host a range of online and on-campus open days as well as recruitment events in cities around the world. These events can include 1-to-1 meetings and portfolio advice, informal chats, presentations and sessions with staff, students and alumni.
Check the RCA event webpage for details of upcoming events including events in India and the USA.
Admissions
Curriculum
Programme structure
The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.
Term 1
The Interrogating Your Practice and Deconstructing Assumptions unit focuses on developing analytical tools for deconstructing and critiquing one’s own practice and previous methods/approaches as well as providing new contexts and directions for their work. Emphasis is placed on inviting new thoughts and progressive ideas through which to develop a jewellery, object, or metal practice. The development of personal and investigative research methods is key and is developed and discussed throughout the term.
Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit.
Term 2
Developing Your Voice and Situating a Practice focuses on developing new techniques, processes, and lines of enquiry through a material-led, material-transformational practice as well as setting forth your suitable career context where students are asked to frame their practice within a chosen professional context within art and design. Research developments and lines of enquiry formulated in Unit 1 will act as a background for the production of a body of work
In term 2 all School of Arts & Humanities students will participate in the Urgency of the Arts, a School-wide unit. Through this unit, we ask: what do arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The unit introduces students to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and practices relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the Arts & Humanities. The delivery is devised to help you identify and query your own practices and disciplinary assumptions through encounters with others and within the various practices undertaken by students in the School, and to raise awareness around contemporary concerns. You will be supported in understanding the ramifications of your own work and practice within a broad cultural context, and recognise its many potentially unintended readings and consequences.
Term 3
The Independent Research Project offers a point of synthesis through exhibition, critical reflection and portfolio production. Contracted and visiting staff from the programme support students to acquire an advanced understanding of practice-led methodologies, critical reflection, production and presentation. Here, the IP supports students with the specific conceptual and material demands of exhibiting and sharing their work and uses this to prepare them for the diverse professional practices of contemporary art and design.
Program Tuition Fee
Rankings
The Royal College of Art has been ranked the number 1 university for art & design internationally for the 9th consecutive year, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023 – the largest world-wide survey of academic and industry opinion.
Scholarships and Funding
House of Fraser Bursary
Supporting students in any MA programme from the UK (Preferably Scottish nationals), experiencing financial hardship
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Full time, Student preferably of Scottish origin
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £10,000
Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships
The Scholarship supports 21 UK MA, MRes and PhD students every year from across all RCA MA, MRes and PhD disciplines.
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Architecture Pathway MRes RCA, Architecture MPhil/PhD, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Fine Arts & Humanities Pathway MRes RCA, Arts & Humanities MPhil/PhD, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Communication Design Pathway MRes RCA, Communication MPhil/PhD, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA, Design Pathway MRes RCA, Design MPhil/PhD, Healthcare & Design MRes, Intelligent Mobility MPhil/PhD, Materials Science MPhil/PhD, Computer Science MPhil/PhD
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Students with Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, or mixed Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage
Eligible fee status: UK fee status
Value: £21,000
The Tony Snowdon Scholarship
Applicants must make an application via the application portal on the Snowdon Trust website from Jan 2023: https://www.snowdontrust.org/scholarships
Eligible Programmes: Architecture MA, Interior Design MA, City Design MA, Environmental Architecture MA, Architecture Pathway MRes RCA, Ceramics & Glass MA, Contemporary Art Practice MA, Curating Contemporary Art MA, V&A/RCA History of Design MA, Jewellery & Metal MA, Painting MA, Photography MA, Print MA, Sculpture MA, Writing MA, Fine Arts & Humanities Pathway MRes RCA, Animation MA, Digital Direction MA, Information Experience Design MA, Visual Communication MA, Communication Design Pathway MRes RCA, Design Products MA, Fashion MA, Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, Intelligent Mobility MA, Service Design MA, Textiles MA, Design Pathway MRes RCA, Healthcare & Design MRes
Funding Categories: Financial hardship, Students with a diagnosed physical or sensory disability
Eligible fee status: Any
Value: Up to £15,000 in tuition fees + £15,000 maintenance support